Page 83 of Second Alarm
"I had it saved up, Hanna. For whenever you sat at my table. I was going to say it eventually. You gave me the opening. I'm not wasting it."
I laugh — ugly and wet, the laugh of a woman whose mother has been saving a speech for years and deployed it over miso soup on a Sunday morning. I laugh and laugh some more, and my mother laughs with me, very quietly, without taking her eyes off my face.
Then I stop laughing. Then I put my forehead on the cold table.
"Cal is going to lose his mind."
"Yes."
"He's going to hate Ty."
"No." She says it simply, like a fact. "He'll be angry. Very angry, for a while. He won't hate Ty."
"How do you know."
"Because I raised both of them."
"You raised one of them?"
"I raised one and a half, Hanna. You can't have a best friend in and out of my house for your entire life without my having some hand in raising him. Ty Brennan has eaten more of my cooking than your brother has in the last two years. Don't tell me I didn't raise him." She reaches for her water glass. "I'm his second mother. His first is in Boise and they don't talk, and for years when he's needed one he's come to my kitchen and I've fed him and said nothing, because he is a quiet man and a good man. I've watched him be Cal's best friend. I've watched him be in love with my daughter. And I've watched him be loyal to both of them at a personal cost I don't think you've let yourself understand."
"Mom."
"What?"
"You're going to destroy me today."
"I know."
"You aren't going to stop."
"Nope."
"Okay." A breath. "Keep going."
"Go tell your brother." She folds her napkin. "Today. Not because I'm setting a deadline. Because you're going to, and I don't want you to spend another day being afraid. Afraid is the worst thing I can imagine for you. If you're going to do it, do it today, while your mother has made you soup."
"Will you — "
"No. I won't come. This is for you and Cal."
"What if he — "
"Cal is going to be furious. He's going to say things. He's going to punch a wall. He's going to call you names I'm going to pretend I don't know he knows. And then, after some time, he's going to sit on his couch and stare at the ceiling and realize that his best friend and his sister have loved each other for years, and that none of you did this at him, and that the only people really hurt by it have been you three, in silence. Your brother is a good man. He'll come around. It will be ugly. It won't be quick. But it will be real."
"How do you know that about Cal."
She looks at me the way she's looked at me my whole life.
"Because I raised him, Hanna."
I'm at the door when she says the last thing.
"Tell Ty something from me."
"Okay."
"Tell him he doesn't have to come to dinner this week. He can come the week after. But he's coming. And he's bringing thewine. And he's sitting in your father's chair — not at the head of the table, I'm at the head — in your father's chair, at my left."
